Yesterday's incident in Split, when a group of fifty masked people violently interrupted a cultural event organized by the Serbian Cultural Society Prosvjeta, caused a stormy reaction in the public and quite upset the Serbian community.

Many figures from the cultural and political spheres spoke out on this occasion, and although the majority condemned this excess, there were also those who supported the attackers. They defended their unreasonable and inhumane stance by saying that the Days of Serbian Culture were a direct provocation, and that the hooligans who committed this atrocity were true patriots who defend the Croatian state and the values ​​on which it is based.

It is more than obvious that such reasoning has led to the classic logical error of the so-called substitution of theses, which the supporters of nationalist tendencies have committed in their narrow-mindedness, unable to understand that loving one's people and country does not mean hating those who do not belong to the majority, but rather respecting the wealth of diversity that coexists in this area and accepting the fact that not all Croatian citizens are of the same nationality, but this does not mean that they love their homeland any less because of it.

The tradition and culture of the Serbian people in Croatia are woven into every segment of its history, as evidenced by centuries-old Orthodox churches, as well as the multitude of famous Serbs who have left an indelible mark on these areas. As much as some would like to rewrite that history and write new pages in which there will be no place for minorities, there remains hope that in the future the minorities will be precisely those people – people trapped in the jaws of the past, who justify hatred with patriotism and recall some past, bad times.

And what is worst of all, most of the participants in that event have connections to the events of the 1990s as well as to last year's snow in Split and Dalmatia. And that is worrying.

Therefore, we condemn this event and such incidents in the strongest possible terms, with the hope that they will not be repeated and that the state of Croatia will react in accordance with the law, and not just with vague statements published for the sake of order via social networks.

Source: Diocese of Dalmatia